Robert Novak has a long history of antipathy toward Israel. But his column today stretches to make an absurd point: that Israel is responsible for the plight of Palestinian Christians. Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. "They are taking our communal lands," he said, pointing to the massive Israeli settlement of Har Homa. "They don't want us to live here. They want us to leave." [....]
A Christian and political independent who calls himself a private-enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Denied permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to get to meetings in Europe.
He ignores a vast body of evidence that reveals a pervasive prejudice against Christians (and oppression of Christians) not just in the West Bank and Gaza, but throughout the Muslim world. Instead he persists in using Christians in these areas as the proto-typical victim (in his view) of Israel's policies. This is clearly an attempt to try to erode Christian support for Israel in America and has become part of a noticeable pattern.
Tim Graham of NRO also noticed this attempt to blame Israel and comments: Novak arrives at this Carter-assisting intersection by worrying about the declining Christian population in the Holy Land. A sympathetic cause, to be sure, but even the New York Times' reporting from the region suggests that the ascent of Islamic domination, not the "worse than apartheid" regime in Israel, is causing that thorny problem.
Update: Bookworm adds:
Novak is working off the Reuters play book for this one -- or, at least, using the same anti-Israel template they all use. Reuters wrote precisely the same type of article back in March . As far as I can tell, the truth is that Israel is the only thing that stands between Arab Christians and complete extermination at the hands of their Muslim "brothers."
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